Tag Archives: Childhood Memories

Memories on Ice

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

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Sleet danced on the rooftop last night.

But for the first time in years, it did not waken me.  Perhaps time has done its job in healing the wounds of Mother’s death.  Still.  While no longer linked to winter’s pounding ice, I suppose her December funeral and the crippling central Oklahoma snow storm that followed will live in memory until I die.

It is no small consolation that my memories no longer seem to reach out of a frozen past to startle me into sadness.  If there is winter ice sadness today, it will come from being housebound — from a fear of driving on slick roads, enough to keep me from my daughter’s side.  Today will be my first absence —  if one doesn’t count last weekend’s self-enforced exile, when I left my post as ‘New Mother’s Helper” to create space for my son-in-law’s parents to discover new granddaughter delights on their own — without benefit of any color commentary I would have struggled to contain:  “Oh, try this…;” or …. “Oh, no, she doesn’t like that….!”  —  all those sort of truthful remarks that hinder rather than help.

Yet the glad and sad-for-grandmother truth is that mother and child are weaning themselves away from true need of my help.  Yesterday, I mostly carried out a few household chores — laundry and more laundry —  while taking time to preserve Reese’s first days with still images.

With much to do, it’s hard to stand still — to allow these first moments near my new grandchild to swaddle me.  Yet, how easy it is to sit when Reese is placed in my arms.  Then and only then does time cease to matter as I rock away cares and chores and the tick-tock minutes.

I look down at her miniature features to watch the myriad expressions baptize her nose, eyes and Gerber cheeks — accompanied by a symphony of sounds rising out of her slightly parted lips.  My eyes water at mystery.  I wonder about what she is thinking — what memories she is even now this very minute forming that can never be shared for lack of words and images and maturity to convey them.

Words about a baby’s memory from a book I’m reading intersect with everyday life today.  They come from a science fiction novel — Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead — which I would never have read, but for urging from a close friend.  I am grateful for his suggestion and for several lines of Card’s thoughts which have invited deeper contemplations of life, like this:

A human child loses almost all the memories of the first years of its life, and its long-term memories only take root in the second or third year of life; everything before that is lost, so that the child cannot remember the beginning of life.

What thoughts dance at the top of my grandchild’s mind, especially when she flails her arms about startled?  Whatever they are, they cause me to respond with a soothing word.  With all the love that I am, I cuddle her close and console her with soft pats on her back.

As Reese dozed yesterday, time melted away to startle me awake with my own first memory.  What it is I may one day share.  But what interests me most today is not mine, but yours.  So I ask: What is your first memory, the first of many frozen in time?  When was it born?

Dilly Rolls & Ham Salad

04 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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There are many subjects I could write on this cold December night where temperatures are dropping to twenty-something — but it’s these two dill-flavored recipes that rise to the top like cream.

The reason is simple.  After an entire day of keeping house, and putting up the last of the Christmas decorations, I still find myself in the cleaning and “putting-in-order” mode — and as my recipe file has been cluttering the top of my kitchen counter since Tuesday, when I mixed up our most recent installment of ham salad, it’s time to put it up.

We had ham with our Thanksgiving turkey — and come to find out, so did Aunt Carol and the rest of my Utah family.  According to Aunt Carol, my Greek grandfather never served one without the other — as a restaurant chef for most of his life, Papa was adamant that pork always be served with turkey — he believed doing so would ward off a cold that eating turkey alone would surely deliver.

I never put much stock in Papa’s sayings.  They went in one ear, out the other — for, even as a child, I had a barometer for truth.  I had discerned at an early age that Papa was good at sandwiching truth between lies.  And one of Papa’s favorites was  how he had come to America sailing on the Titanic!

Amazingly, I heard a version of this tall tale from a cousin of a cousin just last Monday.  Ninety year-old cousin Rose (who’s not my cousin) sounded a little disappointed to hear the boring truth; it made me wonder how many miles this Titanic story had traveled over the years.

But here’s the gospel truth that I ran across last summer:  An old ship manifest of the S.S. Athinai, lists my grandfather, great-great-grandmother Kaleroy and great-great Aunt Mary as passengers from Tripoli, Greece, arriving in America on June 11, 1911.   But fifty years ago, all we knew for sure was that Papa had immigrated to the U.S. from Tripoli, Greece.  We thought he had traveled alone.  And no one knew when.  Like most of Papa’s activities, no one had specifics.   Papa had told so many lies over the years, even he had forgotten the truth.

But today I’m thinking a little more like Pilate, when he looked Jesus in the eye and said without blinking, “What is truth?”   These days I wish I had listened.  I wish I had written down Papa’s sayings because they were pretty darn cute, especially when spoken in his broken English.  Aunt Carol reminded me of this one recently — “Hurry up. Your SOUP’s getTUN’ cold!” — which he’d yell to other drivers who passed him like a speeding bullet, while he slowly made his way through the world in his 1955 “spring special” Chrysler Windsor like Mr. Magoo.

Neither of tonight’s recipes are Papa’s though they would combine nice with a bowl of soup.  The ham salad is a variation on a recipe I pulled from the internet seven or eight years ago.  And the spoon rolls  come from a nice church lady from Lake Jackson who would have a hard time telling a lie.

Before this evening, I’ve never thought of serving the ham salad on the spoon rolls —  but how good they would go together!  With or without soup.  “And that’s the truth.”

Dilly Ham Salad

Serve with crackers or enough for 4 sandwiches

In a bowl, mix together:

2 cups finely chopped honey-smoked ham (I use a food processor)
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1 1/2 tsp dried dill weed
1 Tbsp chopped green onion

In a small bowl, mix together dressing ingredients:

1 cup mayonnaise (I use Duke’s)
2 tsp. vinegar
2 tsp. sugar

Combine together and chill until serving.

Dilly Spoon Rolls

Makes 18 rolls

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (divided)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. dry dill weed
1 tsp. salt
1 pkg. yeast
1 1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup butter
1 egg

Grease 18 muffin tins.

Combine 1 1/2 cup flour with sugar, dill, salt and yeast.  Blend well and set aside.  In a small sauce pan, heat milk and butter (120 to 130 degrees F.)  Add to flour mixture with egg.  Blend, then beat 3 minutes.  Gradually add remaining flour to form a stiff batter.  Cover with tea towel and let rise 45 minutes.  Stir down and spoon into greased muffin tins.  Let rise for another 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Bake rolls for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.  Turn out on cooling rack and serve warm with butter.

Slices of Toast and Family

07 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Writing

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It felt good to sink into everyday life this morning.

With a beautiful candle lit, a cup of coffee nearby and three snoozing canines around me and my favorite chair, I picked up pencil and journal to write.  These days my journal is filled with short stories of ancestors — some told me by aunts and uncles, while others come from reading old newspaper articles.   At yesterday’s funeral, I invited my mother’s oldest brother to recount tales of his youth and memories of his grandparents; he seemed glad to share that which he could still recall.  Uncle Bob’s stories now fill two pages of my journal.

Having lunch with Aunt Jo — whose funeral we gathered at yesterday — has been hovering at the top of my list since Daddy died.  Just three weeks ago I told her, “I want to get together for lunch with you real soon.”    Unfortunately, I didn’t make it happen; and now the opportunity is gone.   But I’m grateful for the scraps of stories she spoke of Sunday evening, and those, of course, take up a page and a half of my journal.

All this gathering of family history has me realizing —  family is more than sharing common bloodlines.  Two weeks ago, I picked up the phone to talk to a second cousin who I didn’t know existed until running across him in research.  My Greek grandfather’s younger sister, Anna — who died three days after my father was born — left three children.  Neither my father nor grandfather ever mentioned them — but it certainly helps explain those trips my young parents took to Vermont, during their early days of marriage.

Amazingly, all three second cousins — born in the mid-1920s — are still alive.   I called the youngest one, John, who is now 85.  Once John recovered from his surprise, he invited me to send up a copy of my research, with a promise to answer whatever questions he could.   I’m still working on the package I promised to send him — hopefully, it will be gone by week’s end.

After finishing today’s morning pages, I made a slice of toast.   The smell of toast always reminds me of grandparents — either my Greek grandfather or my maternal grandmother.  Today it was both.

As far as I know, Granny always had a piece of toast covered with jelly for breakfast.  ‘Toast and Jell,” she called it.   As a young school girl, it was what I often had myself — not because it was my favorite — but because it’s what my Greek grandfather could make me in a hurry before school.  The toast was always burnt around the edges but generous with butter.  Real butter not margarine —  so the bread was always a little smushed from Papa’s effort to spread cold butter over it.  Papa always served it to me with a cup of strong black coffee.  Greek-style, I suppose.

I don’t know if my new-found cousins from Vermont grew up with toast for breakfast or not.  And if they did, whether it was burnt around the edges or covered with jelly.  And it’s not important for me to know — it certainly won’t make my list of questions that my second cousin John so graciously offered to answer.  But possessing these unimportant facts is something one just owns about family.  And this morning, when my teeth crunched into a bit of crispy slightly black around the edges toast, slathered with soft yogurt margarine but no jell, I remembered my grandparents.  And gave thanks.